Dark Snow Project: Crowd-Source Funded Science for Greenland

"There's no place on Earth that is changing faster--and no place where that change matters more--than Greenland." So said 350.org founder Bill McKibben, in a 2012 Rolling Stone magazine interview. As Earth Week 2013 draws to a close, I want to draw your attention to a unique effort to learn more about why Greenland is melting so fast--a crowd-funded research project that anyone can contribute to, which aims to answer the "burning question": How much does wildfire and industrial soot darken the ice, increasing melt? The Dark Snow Project, the first-ever Greenland expedition relying on crowd-source funding, hopes to raise $150,000 to mount a field research campaign to find out. The project is the brainchild of Dr. Jason Box, Professor at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), and one of the world's leading experts on Greenland's glaciers. He has set up a website called darksnowproject.org to help raise the funds for the field campaign, and has raised about half of the needed amount as of mid-April.

Figure 1. Over the course of several years, turbulent water overflow from a large melt lake carved this 60-foot-deep (18.3 meter-deep) canyon in Greenland's Ice Sheet (note people near left edge for scale). Image credit: Ian Joughin, University of Washington.

2012: Unprecedented melting in GreenlandWatching the weather events of 2012 over Greenland made all seasoned climate watchers a little queasy. The vast ice sheet on the island holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 7.36 meters (24.15 feet) were it all to melt, and the ice melt season of 2012 gave notice that an epic melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet may be underway. According to NOAA's 2012 Arctic Report Card, the duration of melting at the surface of the ice sheet in summer 2012 was the longest since satellite observations began in 1979, and the total amount of summer melting was nearly double the previous record, set in 2010 (satellite records of melting go back to 1979.) A rare, near-ice sheet-wide surface melt event melted 97% of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet on July 11 - 12. While a similar melt event at the summit occurred 1889, but the 1889 event has no basis in the instrumental record from coastal Greenland. It's instead likely that 2012 was Greenland's warmest summer in at least 863 years, since the medieval warm period (see http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=677 and http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=725). The incredibly warm temperatures have been blamed on highly unusual atmospheric circulation and jet stream changes, which were also responsible for 2012's unusually wet summer weather in England. It would not be a surprise if this sort of summer began occurring more often, since temperatures on top of the Greenland Ice Sheet have been rising six times faster than the global average during the past twenty years. A May 2013 Geophysical Research Letters paper by McGrath et al., "Recent warming at Summit, Greenland: Global context and implications", concluded that by 2025, there is a 50% chance of ice sheet-wide melt events happening annually. The ice sheet reached its darkest value on record in 2012. The darkened surface was due to below average summer snow, soot particles from pollution and forest fires, and record melting. A darker ice sheet absorbs more solar energy, in a vicious cycle that raises temperatures, melts more ice, and further darkens the ice sheet. The amount of melting that was caused by soot from forest fires is important to know, since global warming is likely to increase the amount of forest fires in coming decades. However, the amount of forest fire soot landing on the Greenland Ice Sheet is almost completely unknown, which is why Dr. Box is determined to find out, via the Dark Snow Project.

Figure 2. Smoke from a fire in Labrador, Canada wafts over the Greenland ice sheet on June 17, 2012, as seen in this cross-section view of aerosol particles taken by NASA's CALIPSO satellite. Image credit: Dr. Jason Box, Ohio State University.

Greenland causing 25% of global sea level riseIn a landmark study published in November 2012 in Science, 47 researchers from 26 laboratories reported that the amount of ice being lost from Greenland and Antarctica has tripled since the 1990s, with Greenland contributing more than twice as much to global sea level rise than Antarctica. The study, "A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance", found that the two ice sheets were responsible for 20% of the global sea level rise of 3.1 mm/year during the 20-year period 1992 - 2011. The remainder of the rise was due to expansion of the water due to heating of the oceans, melting of mountain glaciers, and unsustainable pumping of ground water. Said co-author Erik Ivins of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "The pace of ice loss from Greenland is extraordinary, with nearly a five-fold increase since the mid-1990s." As of 2011, Greenland's contribution to global sea level rise on its own had risen to 20 - 25%, according to an international research group led by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, in an article published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters on 1 June 2012. If the current exponential ice loss trends continue for the next ten years, Greenland's contribution to sea level rise will double to 1.4 mm/yr by 2022, the researchers said. Many sea level rise researchers expect global sea level to rise by about 1 meter (3.3 feet) by 2100. During the 20th century, global sea level rise was about 0.18 meters (7 inches.)

Figure 3. Monthly smoothed (purple) and unsmoothed (blue) values of the total mass lost from the Greenland Ice Sheet (in Gigatons, Gt) from measurements by the GRACE satellites between March 2002-September 2012. An approximate equivalent global sea level rise figure is on the right axis. Note that the decline in ice mass lost from Greenland is not a straight line--it is exponential, meaning that more ice loss is lost each year than in the previous year. Image credit: 2012 Arctic Report Card.

Will Antarctica be more important than Greenland for sea level rise?Although melting from Greenland is currently raising global sea level by about a factor of two more than Antarctica melting is, that situation may change later this century. A 2013 study by Dahl-Jensen et al. looked at a new ice core drilled from the bottom-most depths of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The core suggests that the ice in Greenland may have partially survived the warm Eemian period before the Ice Age, approximately 118,000 - 126,000 years ago, when Greenland temperatures were 5- 8°C warmer than present-day temperatures. Global sea level during the Eemian was 4 - 8 meters (13 - 26 ft) higher than the present sea level, and the scientists estimated that melting from Greenland was responsible for 2 meters (6.6 ft) of this sea level rise. This implies that Antarctica was responsible for 50 - 75% of global sea level rise during the Eemian, and thus we might expect Antarctica to take over as the dominant source of sea level rise later this century, when global temperatures may to rise to levels similar to those experienced during the Eemian.

Video 1. Glaciologist Dr. Jason Box and 350.org founder Bill McKibben plug the Darksnow project in this January 2013 video by Peter Sinclair. There's some impressive footage of the record Greenland snow melt of summer 2012 sweeping away a 20-ton tractor that was attempting to repair a bridge washed out by the raging Watson River on July 11, 2012 in Kangerlussauaq, Greenland. The driver escaped unharmed.

Support the Dark Snow ProjectOne of Dr. Box's collaborators, photographer James Balog, who created the amazing time-lapse Greenland glacier footage in the fantastic 2012 "Chasing Ice" movie, puts it like this: "Working in Greenland these past years has left me with a profound feeling of being in the middle of a decisive historic moment--the kind of moment, at least in geologic terms, that marks the grand tidal changes of history." On that note, I encourage you all to support the Dark Snow Project. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Quoting Xulonn:Wrong - simply demonstrating denier characteristics is not sufficient to be labeled a troll. When someone, and there are several here, makes the same false statement - known as a "strawman" - dozens of times and refuses to acknowledge the correction of a blatant error, they are trolling.

An example is someone who repeatedly makes statements like "if a single weather event is different than climate, why do you always say sandy was caused by agw?????"

No climate scientist or knowledgeable layperson would ever say that - therefore it is a "strawman" argument. Science based comments on Sandy might include comments suggesting or stating that the storm was likely influenced by AGW/CC, but never caused by it.

Statements like that, if made by a newbie one time, deserve a civil answer.

However, repeating that false "strawman" statement over and over and over and over is blatant trolling. It's one of the classic symptoms of climate denialism described by psychologists who study the subject.

Can you provide a link for this mental disorder of "climate denialism" that is being studied by psychologists now?..I work in the medical industry and I have never heard of this? Are there clinical trials being conducted on this disorder? You can WU me so we wont clog up the blog..

I am looking for a cloud formation term.You took a picture of it a year or so ago.Its the refractive cap of clouds above a rapidly rising thunderhead. What the heck is that phenomenon called?I am having a senior moment!

Quoting ncstorm:He or she is right..it seems if you are labeled a denier then one is trolling..[snip]

Wrong - simply demonstrating denier characteristics is not sufficient to be labeled a troll. When someone, and there are several here, makes the same false statement - known as a "strawman" - dozens of times and refuses to acknowledge the correction of a blatant error, they are trolling.

An example is someone who repeatedly makes statements like "if a single weather event is different than climate, why do you always say sandy was caused by agw?????"

No climate scientist or knowledgeable layperson would ever say that - therefore it is a "strawman" argument. Science based comments on Sandy might include comments suggesting or stating that the storm was likely influenced by AGW/CC, but never caused by it.

Statements like that, if made by a newbie one time, deserve a civil answer.

However, repeating that false "strawman" statement over and over and over and over is blatant trolling. It's one of the classic symptoms of climate denialism described by psychologists who study the subject.

Quoting weathermanwannabe:Good Afternoon. As a long-time blogger on here, and pursuant to the myriad issues that Dr. Master's blogs on in any given year, the GW issues seem to be the most divisive; not because of the information that he posts, but because of the way the Blog has been hijacked to some degree by folks engaging in disparaging and disrespectful remarks against one another on a daily basis.....Being smart and informed is one thing; being disrespectful to others if they disagree with your viewpoint is another thing (no matter how smart or how many degrees you have).

Childish quite frankly at times and often distracting when we might have pressing weather issues that might immediately affect lives in the short term.

GW issues will be here for quite some time (decades to come) and not a problem to discuss it when Dr. Master's posts a relevant Blog Entry but I really hope that Yall tone down some of the GW rhetoric/arguments when we have immediate severe weather threats to discuss and particularly when we swing into the upcoming hurricane season.

Thank You.

I'm confused as to why some abstain from chastising as "disparaging and disrespectful" or "childish" or "distracting" those who come into Dr. Masters' forum and basically call him (and all those who agree with him) a liar or a crook or an idiot. It seems to me such behavior is by far more deserving of opprobrium than any other displayed here.

Anyway, I sincerely hope Dr. Masters continues to do precisely what he does best: write in detail about whatever it is that interests him, and that he feels his readers want or need to hear. I'm certain, given his background and reputation, that there will be many dozens of tropical weather-specific blog entries this season. But I'm also pretty sure that, given the fact that his is no longer a tropics-only blog, we'll see many blog entries on non-tropical extreme weather when that's the story, and climate change when he finds it necessary. And that's fine by me; anything else would be far less interesting...

to a Terra satellite image of the W. Greenland coast, 6/26/2012. The image is at 1km, and it's well worth looking at the 250m image available from that page.

One can see very clearly a peripheral band of dark-surfaced-ice in the ablation zone, dotted with melt ponds.

The material has been termed 'cryoconite' and consists of any non-volatile components of the ice (soot, pollen, dust), much as a rotting snowbank in a parking lot develops a dark surface crust of its included sand, cigarette butts and Ripple decanters.

Here is the link to a recent NOAA release (April 25th) on the "last" of the NWS doppler radar upgrades, nationwide, which happened at the Browsville, TX doppler cite. Ever wonder how good the coverage of the doppler images, particularly during severe weather events, has improved over the past several years? [ i.e. the media and us often discussing the issue of pending/real time bowing segments in frontal lines).

The nationwide dual-pol upgrade began in Sept. 2011 and the public has been benefiting from the new technology every day since. Here are a few successes:

•On Feb. 10, 2013, NWS weather forecasters in Jackson, Miss., used the new radar technology to confirm a powerful tornado (EF-4) was moving across Southern Mississippi’s Lamar County toward the populated city of Hattiesburg. Forecasters warned the public using detailed, descriptive language about the tornado’s size and path, resulting in no fatalities. On the same day, dual-pol information helped the Jackson forecasters recognize thunderstorms with particularly heavy rainfall rates, enabling them to issue flash flood warnings more than an hour before flash flooding started.

Some of this same technology has started to be used on the NOAA planes (Orions) with doppler installed for a better picture of hurricanes and tropical storms as well.

I, for one, think that McDonald's and Burger King are putting something in their products that make it habit forming ...and not only that, did you see the recent article showing a 14 year old burger and it looked the same as a new one? What kind of perservitives are they using ...same as the stuff thats in the twinkies?

I remember back to the ozone crisis. I was young so didnnt read much about it ...just remember that suddenly you couldnt buy aerosol products ...was there this much reluctance to change when this occurred?

My hope is that oil product equipment companies start to produce supplies that support wind and solar energies. We need to keep the manufacturing of these types of products in the US. I also believe that in order to be successful in producing equipment for wind and solar that it needs to be done by companies that are manufacturing other products so that the cost can be offset by revenue/profit from their other products.

Good Afternoon. As a long-time blogger on here, and pursuant to the myriad issues that Dr. Master's blogs on in any given year, the GW issues seem to be the most divisive; not because of the information that he posts, but because of the way the Blog has been hijacked to some degree by folks engaging in disparaging and disrespectful remarks against one another on a daily basis.....Being smart and informed is one thing; being disrespectful to others if they disagree with your viewpoint is another thing (no matter how smart or how many degrees you have).

Childish quite frankly at times and often distracting when we might have pressing weather issues that might immediately affect lives in the short term.

GW issues will be here for quite some time (decades to come) and not a problem to discuss it when Dr. Master's posts a relevant Blog Entry but I really hope that Yall tone down some of the GW rhetoric/arguments when we have immediate severe weather threats to discuss and particularly when we swing into the upcoming hurricane season.

This has been a repeated problem in this country when any scientific result shows that people need to "change their ways" for their own good. People don't want to. Then PR campaigns start up that try to tar and feather the science/scientists. Then these same people elect representatives, and it all goes downhill from there.

Think about it for a minute. Your question can be applied to smoking as well. When scientists first pointed out the damage that smoking caused there was a national uproar. Them damn scientists, what the hell do they know. Tobacco companies dumped millions of dollars into smear campaigns and propaganda against the science. It was a successful campaign too, as it was years before the government finally took any action.

This same pattern occurred when it came to acid rain, ozone depletion, and a number of other scientific results that basically were going to add a cost or force a change on people. Look at the problem with obesity in this country. Why isn't the government doing anything about it? YOU CAN HAVE MY HAPPY MEAL WHEN YOU PRY IT OUT OF MY COLD DEAD GREASY SAUSAGE LIKE FINGERS! That's response you get when the government tries to take direct action. In fact, all you need to do is look at the soda restrictions NY tried to enact to see the kind of response you get.

But to put the record straight, the government IS taking action in regards to climate change. It's just not "in your face" type of action. Various government agencies use quit a bit of climate research in everything from future public works projects to intelligence. So does private industry (like insurance companies).

That being said, can you imagine the uproar if the government went to those people living on the water's edge and said, "Hey, we're moving you inland because the flood risk is just too great."?

People want to the government to operate for the common good, as long as it doesn't affect them.

Interesting thoughts ...

I, for one, think that McDonald's and Burger King are putting something in their products that make it habit forming ...and not only that, did you see the recent article showing a 14 year old burger and it looked the same as a new one? What kind of perservitives are they using ...same as the stuff thats in the twinkies?

I remember back to the ozone crisis. I was young so didnnt read much about it ...just remember that suddenly you couldnt buy aerosol products ...was there this much reluctance to change when this occurred?

My hope is that oil product equipment companies start to produce supplies that support wind and solar energies. We need to keep the manufacturing of these types of products in the US. I also believe that in order to be successful in producing equipment for wind and solar that it needs to be done by companies that are manufacturing other products so that the cost can be offset by revenue/profit from their other products.

Quoting Neapolitan:That's some pretty faulty logic, Largo. That's a little like saying that until you see a three pack-a-day smoker give up cigarettes, you refuse to believe that lung cancer exists.

At any rate, reasonable people may certainly debate just how quickly the worst effects of climate change will be manifest, just as reasonable people may debate just how bad those worst effects will be. But no reasonable person any longer debates--or even pretends to debate--whether the planet is warming, or whether that warming is due to our profligate burning of fossil fuels. No, only unreasonable people do that--and unreasonable people don't deserve our time of day.

Nea I'm not sure I understand what your saying but in reference to what I "think" you mean in the highlighted area above..I don't have the capacity to stand and throw punches with none believers like I once may have..I don't know if you remember but I have some difficulties in memory retention..I'm not perfect..It's not a shock to my ego..But it is a problem..I'm just not equipt that way anymore..Thats why I refer some folks to Dr. Rood's blog..I go there and try to learn more myself..You who post there frequently can address these folks in a way that they at least have a good chance of understanding..If they are willing to learn..From what I've observed there, bloggers like in Post# 879 ,# 898 don't want to learn but troll the vulnerable and un-informed..Anyway I thought I would post on this..

Quoting LargoFl:...IF this is REALLY happening..GW and ocean rising WHY arent we seeing action taken?...until i see that..i dont believe it

That's some pretty faulty logic, Largo. That's a little like saying that until you see a three pack-a-day smoker give up cigarettes, you refuse to believe that lung cancer exists.

At any rate, reasonable people may certainly debate just how quickly the worst effects of climate change will be manifest, just as reasonable people may debate just how bad those worst effects will be. But no reasonable person any longer debates--or even pretends to debate--whether the planet is warming, or whether that warming is due to our profligate burning of fossil fuels. No, only unreasonable people do that--and unreasonable people don't deserve our time of day.

He or she is right..it seems if you are labeled a denier then one is trolling..

looks like only one agenda matters on this blog according to a lot of bloggers..but since I havent heard Dr. Masters who name is brought up many times in stating this is his blog and his topic, then he/she can still debate the opposing side of GW/Climate Change..

Its funny that the argument that this is Dr. Masters's blog when the climate change blog comes up but yet many bloggers here are making up their own rules in what people can discuss??

So it's ok if someone keeps pushing an AGW agenda? There is a word when people push only one agenda and don't allow opposing views.

AGW is not an agenda. It's science. The denier drivel is an anti science agenda, and it's a fact that some of the deniers are in paid employment by fossil fuel interests.

It is a phoney 'debate'. If you belive CO2 is not warming the planet, you should present scientific arguments to back that up. If you think the warming is caused by some other factor, again produce the evidence.

When deniers do present their so called 'evidence', it's just a rehash of drivel posted on denier websites. When this 'evidence' is shot down in flames, and shown to be the baseless, ignorant anti science nonsense that it is, it makes no difference to you. You're back again ten minutes later, spouting the same drivel.

You're clearly not interested in scientific truth, you just make a pretence of being interested, in order to carry out your agenda. Are you being paid?

Agree with what you are saying but in the past 20 years we have see way above normal named storms while the globe has rapidly warmed.

That correlation does not necessarily equate to a causation. There are other natural oscillations in play that have been discussed as the cause of our heightened tropical activity. Also keep in mind that some of this increase is apparent, as our detection of storms has increased. Accumulated cyclone energy is a better variable to look at compared to increasing SSTs due to climate change than simple named storm counts.

He or she is right..it seems if you are labeled a denier then one is trolling..

looks like only one agenda matters on this blog according to a lot of bloggers..but since I havent heard Dr. Masters announce this grand decision of only allowing one side to be discuss then he/she can still debate the opposing side of GW/Climate Change..

Its funny that the argument that this is Dr. Masters's blog when the climate change blog comes up but yet many bloggers here are making up their own rules in what people can discuss??

Quoting LargoFl:[I hear] everywhere the earth is getting warmer...IF the earth IS getting warmer..it stands to reason the winter would get shorter and milder no?..thats not happening from what I see..matter of fact THIS year winter wants to hang on longer...

Quoting Xyrus2000:

No it doesn't stand to reason that winter would get shorter or milder. Winter is still winter. The arctic will still go without sun for months at a time. Our days will still be shorter than our nights. Cold temperatures will still exist.

The general prediction seems to be that the largest changes will be seen in the arctic and the temperate latitudes, and during the transition seasons. On average, the temperate periods (spring and fall) will warm in most locations. For some areas this could lead to an apparent increase in summer and an apparent decrease in winter, although the actual seasons are currently defined by the earth's revolution and would not change.The observations are already matching this prediction, and you can see the strongest trend across the CONUS (although just 2% of the globe) as being in the transition seasons.

Of course the main fallacy with the original comment is that one winter, across about <1% of the globe ("not happening from what I see"), is being used as evidence that apparent winter is not getting shorter. The elephant in the room is that March was actually the ~10th warmest across the globe.